CERES

22” x 5” x 15.5” - 2020

Ceres is made of lava rock from the grounds of my stay in Utah - dating back 20 million years. Minimally sculpted, yet framed as a relic or monolith from the future. The piece highlights time, as an image of the future, yet sculpted from ancient material.

I crafted this piece by splitting open one of these boulders and polishing the internal face, a mix of reflective glassy surface and the pits of captured air.

Named after Ceres, the largest asteroid in our solar system.

There is such a visceral equivalence in texture and form between this lava rock and something we'd deem otherworldly.

The oblong shape felt unmistakably like something that had broken off and was later found floating through space. The pits feel as though they are the craters and evidence of a violent history.

Unlike my other pieces, I left much of the original form of the stone intact because of the story it was already telling : objects, relics, fragments left as the only evidence of another era.

One of the surprises of this piece was the dimensionality it revealed at dusk. While the face presents the illusion of a single plane, the ring extends 3/4" out from the face, casting shadows down into its craters and reflecting off the white and red impurities of the stone, creating a crawling extension of texture.

The cast of soft, even light creates a warmth in the surrounding environment, transforming the stone from a cold and uncomfortable element into a source of life.